News, Analysis and Perspective for Solution Providers and Technology Integrators

Sharpening Their Skills: The 2018 CRN Tech Elite 250

The Tech Elite 250 is comprised of solution providers in the U.S. and Canada who have the highest partner levels from AWS, Cisco, Dell EMC, Google, HPE, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Salesforce, Verizon and VMware. Here is a sampling of that list.

Solution providers don't just sell technology, they use information technology to solve problems for their customers. That means the installation and break-fix skills that solution providers traditionally offered just don't cut it anymore.

"You have to have the technology chops to solve the customers' problems," said Bay Young, president and chief operating officer at vCore Technology Partners, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based solution provider and MSP, in an interview with CRN. "If you can't bring that technical expertise to the customer, then you'll become irrelevant."

Businesses and organizations today are looking for solution providers with deep skills in the technology IT products they sell to ensure they derive the maximum business value from those technologies.

That's why training and certifications are so critical. As solution providers evolve into strategic service providers, they must continuously elevate their skill sets to meet their clients' demands. Training and certifications are also crucial for ensuring that solution providers' engineers and technical sales specialists are up to date on vendors' rapidly evolving IT product portfolios.

CRN's annual Tech Elite 250 list honors an exclusive group of North American IT solution providers that have earned the highest number of advanced technical certifications and partner program levels from leading IT vendors.

The following is a sampling of 25 of the solution providers on this year's Tech Elite 250 list, with the list of companies available to view here. For information on purchasing the complete list with all collected firmographic data, contact Laurie Condon on the East Coast (lcondon@thechannelcompany.com) or Nora Uriarte on the West Coast (nuriarte@thechannelcompany.com).